Ask HN: Did vacuum tubes help develop transistors?

I think yes, because of: 1. First transistor was field-gate which (unless bipolar transistor) shares some of principles. For example, some engineers of sound amplifiers (Николай Сухов) insist on having field-gate transistor or vacuum tube on input cascade. 2. There are lots of transistor connections evolved from vacuum tubes connection, like cascode. 3. There are some triodes in which filament serves as cathode. It is almost a transistor except of needness to have two input lines for a cathode (instead of three inputs in regular triode - one input for cathode and two inputs for filament for letting cathode to emit).

Transistors (or semiconductor devices) preceded tubes.

It might even be that early radio operated totally without tubes.. The carrier wave was made with electromechanical dynamo and the signal was then AM-modulated with carbon microphone. And the crystal receivers were totally semiconductor-based, of course.